


Follow-Up

by AnnetheCatDetective



Series: Give Me The News [2]
Category: St. Elsewhere
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Slice of Life, Victor Ehrlich: Disaster Bi, doctors make the worst patients, pineapple pizza discourse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 16:35:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17026242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Set post-Rain.





	Follow-Up

    “You here for your follow-up appointment?” Morrison asks, leaning back in his seat. He’d been absently poking at his lunch while deep in conversation with Chandler, when Victor had approached the table just looking for an empty seat. He doesn’t follow the question until Morrison’s gaze flickers down to his splinted pinky and back up.

 

    “Oh-- oh, yeah. Well, no, on your lunch break-- Although I guess when that’s over you have to see your real patients.”

 

    “Ehrlich, you are a real patient.” Chandler says, amused.

 

    “Yeah, but-- not a really real patient.”

 

    “Come here.” Morrison waves him over, and he sets his tray down and scoots his chair in closer.

 

    “Whaddya say, doc, is it bad?” He asks, feeling a little vindicated when Chandler snorts. It doesn’t always work out, when he tries to be funny, when he tries to be one of the guys, it… well, it almost never works out.

 

    “You been icing it?” Morrison takes his hand, carefully removing the splint.

 

    “Yeah, when I get the chance. Doctor Craig yelled at me when I stuck a towel full of ice in my pocket because I was late to a lecture and I forgot about it and so I started dripping…”

 

    “Well, he knows why icing it’s important. He’d yell at you if he thought you weren’t doing it.”

 

    “He’d yell at you no matter what you do.” Chandler says. “That’s your lot in life. Although…”

 

    “What?”

 

    “When Kiley nearly slipped and fell because you left a big puddle behind you… I’m not saying I was cheering, but...”

 

    “You keep it elevated?” Morrison starts manipulating the pinky, guiding him through bending it forward, then pushing back.

 

    “Well-- ow!-- Some of the time.”

 

    “Does it hurt moving it that far?”

 

    “Not bad. It’s a little stiff, but--”

 

    “Okay, well elevate it, and it won’t be that stiff. Taking naproxen?”

 

    “I did! The first day.” He shrinks a little at the look Morrison gives him. “Well you know, gastrointestinal side effects-- It stopped really hurting, so--”

 

    “A couple days on naproxen isn’t going to kill you.”

 

    “Doctors really do make the worst patients.” Chandler adds, but it’s not unfriendly.

 

    Morrison carefully bends it back again, thumb sliding up and straightening him back out. Another fold forward against the palm, some careful feeling-out along the ligaments.

 

    “I want you to keep wearing the splint if you’re going to do anything active, but you should pop it off and do some stretches whenever you have a minute to. And take that naproxen.” He orders, continuing to manipulate Victor’s hand. “Just do this for yourself, few times a day, get yourself a tennis ball and squeeze down as hard as you can. Where’s it hurting?”

 

    “Extensor digiti minimi.”

 

    “Wish all my patients could be so precise. Okay, just like that.” He finishes taking him through the round of stretching, before returning the splint to Victor’s hand and his attention to his lunch. There’s a neat pile of olives next to a disassembled chunk of some kind of casserole Victor wouldn’t presume to identify.

 

    “Not an olive fan?”

 

    “Hm? Guess not. Force of habit, mostly.” He smiles. “Nina likes ‘em. I move all mine to the edge of the plate and she takes them. I take her red onion.”

 

    “Aw, that’s nice. I wish I had someone to pick off the things I don’t like. That’s how you know you married the right person. I mean, and I don’t think I’m too picky--” Victor says, electing to politely ignore Chandler’s snort at the assertion. “But it’s nice, that’s all. You know, some people want a person who likes what they like, but if the restaurant forgets to hold something and you’re stuck with a, a pickle you didn’t want or chunks of something you don’t like in a side salad, you know… where are you then? If you say ‘I hate coleslaw’ and she says ‘I hate coleslaw’ and you say ‘it’s love’ and then there’s coleslaw, well… then what?”

 

    “I’m sure the Morrisons can rest easy knowing you approve of their marriage based entirely on the least important detail.” Chandler says.

 

    “No, no, Ehrlich is right. The olives would pile up, it would be a real mess.”

 

    “Or you wouldn’t get anything with olives.”

 

    “Mexican place up the street puts olives in everything.”

 

    “I can’t enjoy Mexican food here. It never tastes right. I even miss cilantro, and that just makes guacamole taste like soap.” Victor sighs. “I hated it back when I could get it easy but now… Vijay brought in this thing once, and I _swear_ , it had that same soapy smell, took me right back home. But he said he’d never heard of cilantro, so I don’t know.”

 

    “Ehrlich, you’re not exactly go-to guy for food opinions.” Chandler shakes his head. “You eat pineapple on pizza.”

 

    “So? What’s wrong with that?”

 

    “I can’t talk to him.”

 

    “What?”

 

    “Homesick for food that tastes like soap, pineapple on pizza, you’re ridiculous.” He says, but there’s nothing really mean about it when he says it. Well, Victor doesn’t think.

 

    _Or they’re all mean all the time_ , the intrusive little voice in the back of his head supplies, _and you’re too dumb to figure it out. You always were._

 

    No. No, he can tell. Chandler’s not mean, and Morrison, he doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. Kiley is sometimes, and--

 

    Oh.

 

    And White.

 

    He sets his tray down just too-hard in the empty seat to Victor’s other side and shoots him a glare that the others don’t catch.

 

    “What about food that tastes like soap?” He laughs, and the thing is, it’s a normal-sounding laugh. He looks normal. The glare could have been all in Victor’s imagination, for all he really knows-- he and White haven’t butted heads in… well, a while. Victor’s never gone out of his way to start trouble with the guy, except for the times he almost kills one of his patients, he just always gets the feeling like…

 

    Like anyone might chew White out for endangering someone, but somehow he only holds a grudge when it’s him. But he knows better than to say as much to anyone, he’d sound crazy, he figured that out by junior high school. The rules are just… different, with him. And he sees these things no one else does, but he can’t see any of the things everyone else does.

 

    “Ehrlich likes cilantro, says it tastes like soap. And he eats pineapple on pizza.” Chandler says, and Victor doesn’t think he means to be mean by laughing with White about it, Chandler just means to catch him up on the conversation a little, but he thinks White does mean to be.

 

    Really, he doesn’t know how Morrison can stand the guy.

 

    “I don’t _like_ cilantro, and it _does_ taste like soap, I just said it makes me homesick.” He grumbles.

 

    “I mean if you don’t like pineapple on pizza you can always pick it off.” Morrison shrugs. “Give it to someone who likes it.”

 

    “No, it has juice, it makes the rest of the thing… fruity.” White shakes his head.

 

    And okay, he didn’t mean it like _that_ , but Victor bristles anyway.

 

    “And just what is wrong with a little fruit?” He demands. “Fruit’s good for you, who doesn’t like fruit?”

 

    “You’re into fruit, noted.”

 

    “So what if I am? So what if I like what I like? Nobody’s making you eat an entirely hypothetical pizza.”

 

    “He doesn’t mean anything, Ehrlich, forget it.” Chandler transfers a lemon bar from his tray to Victor’s. “Here, you want this? After what passes for chicken a la king around here, I don’t seem to have much appetite.”

 

    “Is that what that was? Glad I stuck with a salad…” Victor makes a face. Neither of the hot dish options had inspired much confidence. Still, he flashes Chandler a smile over the lemon bar. “Thanks.”

 

    “Sure. You’re gonna need something more than a salad if you want to make it through the rest of this shift-- God help you if your stomach starts growling in the middle of Craig’s lecture later.” Chandler stands, taking his empty tray.

 

    Victor frowns. Tendon repair, that’s what they’re covering, he knows the material just fine right up until Craig asks him about it… It almost feels personal.

 

    He focuses on getting through his salad, while White complains to Morrison about some difficult patient-- bites back the question of whether White sent this one into cardiac arrest or not, because it’s maybe a little mean of him to hold onto something that happened… what, last month? More or less, anyway. He doesn’t think White’s a very good doctor or a very pleasant person, but the last thing he really wants is to start a fight again now that White’s ignoring him.

 

    White reaches past him, adding Morrison’s discarded little pile of olives to his own casserole, and Victor tries to ignore the fact that he feels anything at all about that. It’s not that he wants the olives or anything. It’s that White is such an ass, and Morrison’s so nice, and it doesn’t seem fair that they have such an easy friendship, when Victor’s friendships all feel so hard-won and, for the most part, so fragile.

 

    “You eating around your mushrooms?” Morrison asks him.

 

    “Oh-- yeah.” He looks up, hesitant. “You want ‘em?”

 

    “Yeah, sure, if you don’t.”

 

    “You’ll eat pineapple on pizza and you won’t eat mushrooms?” White asks.

 

    “I eat mushrooms.” He shrugs. “Cooked in things, sometimes. I don’t like this kind, raw, but I eat mushrooms.”

 

    Still, it’s nice being part of the circle, even if White wants to be pissy about… whatever he’s pissy about today. Whatever he’s always pissy about, and everyone says it’s okay because he’s just stressed about his marriage, but he was like this when Victor met him, angry and mean deep down, and slapdash about work.

 

    He starts separating out his mushrooms more purposefully, towards the edge of the plate nearest Morrison. By the time the mushrooms are gone, so is the rest of Morrison’s lunch, but he stops before getting up to leave.

 

    “What are you doing with that hand?” He asks, and Victor looks down to make sure he’s not doing something careless without thinking about it, before he realizes Morrison doesn’t mean now, this moment, but what he’s going to do.

 

    “Stretches. Keep the splint on for handball. Ice it. Naproxen.”

 

    “For at least the rest of the week. And elevate it.” He jabs a finger at him. “Or I’ll put you in a sling.”

 

    “I can’t be in a sling, Craig’ll kill me. I’m surprised he let me live this long.”

 

    “Keep it elevated. Get that tennis ball, spend a couple minutes squeezing. If you want to switch to buddy taping in a couple of days, that’s fine, but you don’t get to decide when you stop bracing it one way or another. No self-treating.”

 

    “Whatever you say.”

 

    “That’s right.” Morrison laughs, poking gently at Victor’s chest, before patting his shoulder. “Just tell yourself… he’ll kill you even more if you don’t take your recovery seriously.”

 

    “You sure know how to make a guy feel better.” Victor rolls his eyes, but… well, he doesn’t feel worse.

 

    Morrison leaves-- and leaves Victor alone with White. They regard each other a moment, and then silently agree not to start, though it’s a brittle peace as Victor finishes his lemon bar and his milk.

 

    He doesn’t know why it feels personal. He never knows, and it’s not like White’s the first guy he’s ever not gotten along with, even the first he’s never gotten along with this way. Maybe he’s too sensitive, he doesn’t know. Maybe he’s piling his history on White because the other month he’d called him out on a dumb mistake and they’re just at odds a little.

 

    He catches up with Chandler, as they both head for Craig’s lecture, holding him back a moment in an empty stretch of hallway.

 

    “Hey… can I get a second opinion from you?”

 

    “About the hand?”

 

    “No. About White. You really think he doesn’t mean anything when he gets at me?”

 

    “Oh, he absolutely means something when he gets at you.” Chandler says. “But there’s no point getting into it with him. Just wait it out until he’s cut from the program.”

 

    “Yeah, well, I hope it’s soon.”

 

    “You and me both.” He shakes his head. “Come on, let’s not give Craig one more reason to yell at you today.”

 

    He wants to ask how Morrison can be friends with that guy, but he doesn’t expect Chandler knows any better than he does.

 

    “He’s going to find a reason.” He groans. “He always does.”

 

    “Well… it won’t be because we were late. Look-- White means this stuff, but I don’t. I mean, pineapple on pizza _is_ disgusting. But that’s nothing against you.” He adds, before Victor can protest. “Hey, going by the prevailing logic, the fact that we _don’t_ like the same pizza toppings is some kind of deep sign of personal compatibility.”

 

    Victor lets out the most nervous laugh he thinks he’s ever heard come out of himself, and it’s a pretty tight race given how much nervous laughter he’s been the source of in his life.

 

    “Right. Right, the… yeah. I mean, that would be, people would think that was weird.”

 

    “Think what was weird?”

 

    “You know, if you and I were-- Well, obviously not _married_.”

 

    “No, don’t worry, I wasn’t going to suggest we get married.” Chandler laughs.

 

    “People always think it’s weird when one person is _really_ attractive and the other person is…” He gestures to himself.

 

    “Yeah, I think there are at least two things people would have a problem with before they got down to ‘one of those guys is more handsome than the other one’, but sure. That would make it weird.”

 

    “Two things? You think? Oh-- oh, right, no… I guess so.”

 

    “Yeah, the San Francisco in you’s showing.”

 

    “I’m not--”

 

    “No, I know.” Chandler says, before Victor can say ‘actually from San Francisco’. “We’re good.”

 

    “Great.” He says, trying to summon up what he thinks is the correct level of enthusiasm. He’s not sure what that _is_ , but he’d like to hit it.

 

    He never seems to…

 

    They’re the last two to slide into the lecture.

 

    “ _Ehr_ lich, I thought we _talked_ about your not being late to lectures again.” Craig says-- and without one word to Chandler, but… well, what did he expect? There was always going to be some reason, even if they are there right on the dot. But that's life.


End file.
